quality in Greece, as I conceive him to have actually existed, that I shall give a full quotation of this passage:[1]—
"As to the mixed sort, which is made up of them both, there is, first of all, a difficulty in determining what he who is possessed by this third love desires; moreover, he is drawn different ways, and is in doubt between the two principles, the one exhorting him to enjoy the beauty of the youth, and the other forbidding him; for the one is a lover of the body and hungers after beauty like ripe fruit, and would fain satisfy himself without any regard to the character of the beloved; the other holds the desire of the body to be a secondary matter, and, looking rather than loving with his soul, and desiring the soul of the other in a becoming manner, regards the satisfaction of the bodily love as wantonness; he reverences and respects temperance and courage and magnanimity and wisdom, and wishes to live chastely with the chaste object of his affection."
It is remarkable that Plato, in this analysis of the three sorts of love, keeps strictly within the bounds of paiderastia. He rejects desire and the mixed sort of love, reserving friendship (Philia) and ordaining marriage for the satisfaction of the aphrodisiac instinct at a fitting age, but more particularly for the procreation of children. Wantonness of every description is to be made as much a sin as incest, both by law and also by the world's opinion. If Olympian victors, with an earthly crown in view, learn to live chastely for the preservation of their strength while training, shall not men, whose contest is for heavenly prizes, keep their bodies undefiled, their spirits holy?
Socrates, the mystagogue of amorous philosophy, is absent, as I have observed, from this discussion of the laws. I turn now to those earlier dialogues in which he expounds the doctrine of Platonic, or, as I should prefer to call it, Socratic, love. We know from Xenophon, as well as Plato, that Socrates named his philosophy the Science of Love. The one thing on which I pride myself, he says, is knowledge of all matters that pertain to love. It furthermore appears that Socrates thought himself in a peculiar sense predestined to reform and to ennoble paiderastia. "Finding this passion at its height throughout the whole of Hellas, but most especially in Athens, and all places full of evil lovers and of youths seduced, he felt a pity for both parties. Not being a lawgiver like Solon, he could not stop the custom by statute, nor correct it by force, nor again dissuade men from it by his eloquence. He did not, however, on that account abandon the lovers or the boys to their fate, but tried to suggest a remedy." This passage, which I have paraphrased from
- ↑ Jowett's trans., p. 837.
